Your's truly, Scattergun

There are a multitude of blogs that show the full set of winners and grinners from the recent 60th APA Annual Book Design Awards, 2012. Have a squizz at these urls.

http://www.readings.com.au/collection/apa-book-design-award-winners-2012


http://wheelercentre.com/dailies/post/7ab1534d5ac7/

Last Thursday I headed to Sydney for the big night. (When will it be in Melbourne I wonder?) As a lone freelancer I think it's an essential entry in the diary. The APA book design award night is a chance to get connected with other book design folk and meet face-to-face those excellent editors and publishers you've been emailing all year.  

And no matter how many book shops I enter and loiter within for unduly long hours throughout the year, I am never familiar with all the books shortlisted. Congratulations to all who were shortlisted and all who won. Here's a few of my personal faves from the year. One here wasn't even shortlisted. Ha ha!

In truth I can't remember all those that stopped me in my tracks, all those books I couldn't help but notice; book covers I wish I'd been responsible for. But I have a blog task for 2013 – to photograph every cover I love whenever I see it for 2013 AFIBDA – The 2013 AboutBookDesign Fickle and Imperfect Book Design Awards. So this is the inaugural, totally imperfect selection, terribly limited in genre and, like all awards, rather fickle.

























Late into Thursday night I relaid a story to fellow designer, Phil Campbell, about once sending no less than 16 concepts to a publisher. The publisher duly sent an email back saying, 'Love it.' Happy though confused, I enquired as to which one. 'The top one of course'. The publisher hadn't needed opened the pdf to see the other 15 concepts. He didn't want 16 concepts, just 1 good one. Phil empathised, 'Ah, the old scattergun approach. I used to do that in my early days. Trigger happy but aimless'. Phil's term still makes me smile. It was well worth the trip to Sydney if only to pick up this perfect description of my more-than-occasional under-confidence.



Fortunately I picked up more than that . . . The Best Literary Fiction Cover award for Gillian Mears' Foal's Bread – an award I'm really delighted and thankful to have received because it's a stunning read and the result of an ideal working experience with those in-house at Allen&Unwin. I am keeping my fingers crossed it wins the Miles Franklin too.

I will not present more than 3 concepts.
I will not present more than 3 concepts.
I will not present more than 3 concepts.
I will not present more than 3 concepts.
I will not present more than 3 concepts.